Five of Peter O'Toole's best

Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – Peter O'Toole, best known for playing the title role in the 1962 film "Lawrence of Arabia," died on Saturday, December 14. He was 81.

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – O'Toole embraces his wife, actress Sian Phillips, circa 1961. They were married in 1959 and stayed together for two decades.

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – O'Toole's first major film success came in the title role of T. E. Lawrence in "Lawrence of Arabia" in 1962. It earned him the first of eight Academy Award nominations.

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – O'Toole waits backstage on the opening night of "Hamlet" at the Old Vic Theatre in London on October 22, 1963. Born in Ireland and raised in England, O'Toole's acting career began on stage in England as a teenager.

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – In 1964, O'Toole played the role of King Henry II in "Becket," opposite Richard Burton as Thomas Becket. Both men were nominated for the best actor Oscar for the film, but both lost.

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – O'Toole relaxes at home on February 15, 1965.

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – Wendy Craig and O'Toole rehearse for "Ride a Cock Horse" by playwright William Barrow on June 23, 1965.

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – O'Toole circa 1965. "Ireland, and the world, has lost one of the giants of film and theatre," Irish President Michael D. Higgins said in a statement.

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – Katharine Hepburn stars opposite O'Toole in the 1968 film "The Lion in Winter." His role as Henry II earned him another Oscar nomination.

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – O'Toole's fourth Oscar nomination came in 1969 for the role of a shy English school teacher in "Goodbye, Mr. Chips."

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – He was again nominated for best actor for his portrayal of the 14th Earl of Gurney in the 1972 movie "The Ruling Class."

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – O'Toole's leading role in the 1980 film "The Stunt Man" brought him a sixth best actor nomination from the Academy. Steve Railsback, right, also starred in the film. It was seen as a comeback for O'Toole, whose battle with alcohol addiction hampered his career in the 1970s.

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – O'Toole mocked his own image as an over-the-hill, alcoholic matinee idol in the 1982 film "My Favorite Year." He was again nominated for best actor.

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – O'Toole accepts his honorary Oscar from actress Meryl Streep during the 75th Academy Awards in 2003. The engraving on the gold statuette reads: "Whose remarkable talents have provided cinema history with some of its most memorable characters."

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Oscar-nominated actor Peter O'Toole – O'Toole's role as an aging, out-of-work actor obsessed with a young woman played by Jodie Whittaker in the 2006 film "Venus" earned him his final Oscar nomination. He holds the record for the most Academy Award acting nominations without a win.

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Story highlights

Peter O'Toole was an outstanding actor and a movie star, writes Gene Seymour

He showed his versatility in everything from "Lawrence of Arabia" to "My Favorite Year"

He says O'Toole enchants and frightens the viewer of "The Ruling Class"

One of the many characters Peter O'Toole played on-screen insisted that he wasn't an actor but a movie star. We knew better.

The real O'Toole, who died Saturday in London at 81, was triumphantly a great actor and a great screen idol. He played a variety of roles, from meek (1969's "Goodbye Mr. Chips") to bombastic (1968's "The Lion in Winter").

In the process, he yielded a body of work that, taken together, was likely more varied than any actor of the prodigious, mostly hell-raising generation of male actors that emerged as screen icons mid-20th century. (In terms of variety, only Michael Caine challenges O'Toole, but not Richard Burton, Richard Harris or Sean Connery.)

Here are five of his best movies, in my view, and the ones most representative of his life's work. What's your own list? It's through this ongoing evaluation that artists such as O'Toole live on:

Gene Seymour

1. "The Stunt Man" (1980)

As the imperious moviemaker Eli Cross, O'Toole is a loose cannon: manipulative, abusive, self-centered -- but nowhere near as wicked as he should be. The reason this leads my list of O'Toole's best performances is that it encompasses just about everything about him that was inimitable: Feline physical grace, a musician's timing, a writer's instinct for nuance, bravura rhetorical flourishes and a boundless capacity to keep his audiences off-balance even when he's not speaking or moving.

2. "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962)

It wasn't his first movie role. (That came in 1960's "Kidnapped.") It just seems that way. Fifty-one years have passed since David Lean's desert epic was released and O'Toole's dominant, star-making performance as the flamboyant T. E. Lawrence remains among the most galvanic big-screen breakthroughs in movie history. It also set in motion the dispiriting pattern of O'Toole being nominated for the best actor Oscar and losing.

Gregory Peck was a nice man and his Atticus Finch in "To Kill a Mockingbird" was an even nicer man. But in retrospect, they shouldn't have won the Oscar that, in retrospect, had O'Toole's name all over it. They needed to get it right the first time.

Instead, they denied him six more times, even for his performance as a dying actor in 2006's "Venus," which came three years after he received a lifetime achievement Oscar.

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Peter O'Toole dies

O'Toole's portrayal of Alan Swann, aging movie swashbuckler who's not so devil-may-care when it comes to the demands of 1950s live TV, may well have been his most widely beloved role.

His boisterous physical comedy fits the raucous surrounds like an old shoe (with a hole in the sole.) His Swann also has melancholy moments, but he always keeps the characterand the movie from going to the maudlin zone.

4."The Ruling Class" (1972)

By this time in his career, O'Toole had assembled a curriculum vitae that included at least two overwrought English kings (1964's "Becket" and 1968's "The Lion in Winter"), two self-tortured adventurers (1962's "Lawrence of Arabia" and 1965's "Lord Jim"), a manic Lothario (1965's "What's New Pussycat") and Don Quixote (1972's "Man of La Mancha").

This dark comedy's lead character, Lord Jack Arnold Alexander Tancred Gurney, seems a barking-mad composite of these personalities. At the beginning, Jack's a shaggy, blithe species of maniac who's been called to his family estate to do whatever's expected of a well-heeled nobleman. Problem is, he's convinced that he is God. Why? "Simple. When I pray to Him, I find I am talking to myself."

This brand of crazy is far more blissful than the malevolent kind that takes over the 14th Earl of Gurney when his hair is cut and his demeanor made more "respectable" to his peers. The movie is a tad overlong and may leave you with an acrid aftertaste. But O'Toole bowls you over with the effortless way he enchants you at one end of the movie and frightens you at the other.

5."Lassie" (2005)

In the late autumn of his career, O'Toole eased into being more character actor than movie star and infused even the most offhand role (e.g. the voice of snooty restaurant critic Anton Ego in Pixar's 2007's "Ratatouille") with immaculate polish and unassuming mastery.

My own favorite from this period comes in this latest adaptation of the Eric Knight children's classic, "Lassie Come Home," in which O'Toole plays the gruff Duke of Radling, who's forbidding on the outside but keeps the fuzzy kindness deep within the tempered steel. Often, it's in the miniature parts rather than the major ones that you see where real poetry can come from.